Opening letter

A Harvest of Ordinations

05/10/2024 by Nicola Mills

As this year’s Season of Creation draws to a close with our Harvest Festival, we reflect on all we have seen and heard in these last few weeks of God’s Creation and our responsibilities in it, tending and caring for all God has been good enough to grant us.

During this season, we’ve been blessed with a series of ordinations with connexions to St. Mary’s. Godwin Chimara and Ferdinand von Pronzynski, by the time you read this, will have been ordained to the priesthood – Godwin at St. James’ on 30^th September, and Ferdinand at St. Thomas’ Aboyne on 3^rd October. Maureen Farquhar Mackenzie (pictured below at Godwin’s ordination), who was a regular attender at our Sunday Breakfasts during lockdown, was ordained deacon on 14^th September at St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Inverness, and on 21^st September Helen Randell, who will serve her curacy in Shetland, was ordained deacon in St. Mary’s in our role as pro-cathedral.

This is not so much a harvest, though it looks a rich one – it is more like seedlings being transplanted, from a nice warm seed tray into a larger pot, or from the pot into the earth under the open sky. Their story is not over. As with plants, there will have been plenty of careful preparation before each move, the earth worked and weeded, the plants watered and fed, but in the end we humans have no idea how such planting is going to work out. God’s oversight is always required to bring everything to fruition. Rev. Roger reminded us in his sermon a couple of weeks ago of the moment when Mary Magdalene encountered Jesus near the tomb after He had risen from the dead – she mistook Him for the gardener. But is that such a mistake? Without the gardener, all our harvests, plants or humans or anything else, comes to nothing. Let us give thanks this Harvest for all His works!

Anniversaries

03/08/2024 by Nicola Mills

We mark anniversaries at birthdays, for weddings, for charities etc. Some of us are big fans of this habit and love these celebrations. Others don’t like a big fuss being made – especially if it would put us in the spotlight.

As we approach our 160th Anniversary at St Marys what might we bear in mind so that this opportunity is not wasted?

I hope there will be looking back. We will remember the people who established and sustained St Marys bringing it through until today. Some will know names and faces. For others of us it will be to give thanks for what we have been handed without knowing many of those who have gone before. I’m delighted that Very Rev Graham Taylor, a cherished priest from recent years, will be with us on the 18th of August.

160 years is quite some achievement! We hope that our Sunday worship and anniversary lunch will be full of joy and celebration.

Looking back can be more than mere nostalgia for the past. It can focus us for the future. Although the national and local context have changed so much this is a good moment to recommit to the things that have not changed.

Why do we think our church matters and what is our part to keep it moving forward?

Rev’d Roger

Opening Letter

02/08/2024 by Nicola Mills

St. Mary’s Carden Place, in its 160^th Year

As St. Mary’s now enters its seventeenth decade, some might look about and wonder where that decade will take us. For the first time in years we cannot afford a stipend for a new rector. The diocese is in an unhappy state, as we wait to hear what will happen with Bishop Anne, and learn to work with our third stand-in Bishop in a year. Attendances at almost all churches across the city and shire are low. Where are we going? What is our purpose here? Would anyone miss us if we just faded away?

The church in Ephesus might well have thought that when they received the letter we know today as Ephesians. There had been great fallings-out there, and in the world around them there were accusations of witchcraft, political strife, warfare, corruption. Their guide, Paul of Tarsus, was in prison in Rome, about to be executed, which is why he was writing them this last letter. Put on God’s armour, he told them. Pray constantly, for yourself and for others. Keep going.

The Episcopalians in Scotland might have thought that during the time of the Penal Laws. Would it be easier just to admit defeat, stop our clandestine meetings in threes and fours in someone’s attic, and give up? But they did not. Bishop John Skinner, among others, led the way in rebuilding co-operation and then friendship with the Government and the Established Church, and saw the last of the Penal Laws revoked. If he had not, we might not be here today.

The Oxford Movement, the inspiration for the foundation of St. Mary’s, was one of many new ideas that nearly split our church. Our original congregation broke away from St. John’s, causing dissension and enmity at every level. God has filled His church with humans, and we are terribly fallible, whoever we are. Yet though we still have ‘High Churches’ and ‘Low Churches’ and everything in between, the Oxford Movement no longer has the power to split our church – and who knows what other arguments will also fade into the past, leaving us wondering what all the fuss was about?

Some people come into a church for the first time to find other people, and unexpectedly encounter God. Some people come in looking for God, and unexpectedly find a community. If we do nothing else at St. Mary’s over the decades to come, let us help to bring anyone who comes to our church to both God and community, here in the west end of Aberdeen.

The Season of Creation – Harvest

29/09/2023 by Nicola Mills

As I write, the freezer is bulging with raspberries and blackberries, and there are sacks of potatoes and onions in all kinds of stashes around the house. There is jam and wine in the pantry. It has been a good year (if we ignore the courgette disaster!), and as the church’s season of Creation draws to an end and we celebrate Harvest, I am duly very thankful indeed!

Down on the allotment, however, things are looking a bit drab. There are some runner beans still growing, but the broad bean stalks and the peas are black and withered, and there is bare soil where the onions and potatoes have been dug. Much of it looks dead. The swallows are gathering on the telegraph wires, the butterflies are disappearing, the bees are seizing those last few sips of nectar from the late flowers, and everything is slowing down. It’s that time of year: everything needs a rest.

In our church year, too, once harvest is past and advent is still to come, death and darkness seem to be the theme. We’re drawing close to All Souls’ Day and Remembrance, those moments of quiet grief that we mark annually. We remember those we have known who have gone before us, and those who gave their lives for the life we live. It is right to acknowledge our sorrow and others’, to mark our loss, and as the year darkens into winter, it feels as if all God’s creation marks it with us.

Our season of creation is drawing to a close, but in the cycle of the church’s year we will celebrate it again. We are a church of the Resurrection, and we know that however dark it grows, light and life will come again – first in the celebration of Christmas, and then in the joy of spring and Easter.

And it will come again sooner than we think – better get the seed catalogues out!

Nicola Mills